Interviews

Mark Wallinger: ‘I’m reversing what happens at Madame Tussauds’

The Human Figure in Space returns this Turner Prize-winning British artist to his longstanding interest in the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Here, Wallinger reflects on spectatorship and the mirrored world
David Chipperfield: ‘Architecture shouldn’t exist on its own. There is no reason for it to exist as an independent thing, except for the glory of the architect’

Fresh from his transformation of the Royal Academy of Arts, David Chipperfield talks about architecture as a form of diagnostics, assisting the life and culture of its inhabitants, and about staying out of the way of the art
Alicia Kopf: ‘My idea is to appropriate polar history to a present-day story of survival’

Catalan artist Alicia Kopf has won acclaim for her novel Brother in Ice, which sits at the pinnacle of a cycle of artistic projects about the Arctic and the Antarctic. Here, she talks about her own epic story
Shelley Himmelstein: Soccerscapes – Fifa World Cup Series; Michael Sorgatz: Kaleidoscope Dreams

Gallery director Randall Harris explains how this double show came about, while Himmelstein talks about how she captures the movement and energy of the players and the excitement of fans in her soccerscapes and Sorgatz discusses his mesmerising dreamscapes
Ruimteveldwerk: ‘It is more like an understatement that creates an experiment than an artwork’

A social experiment investigating themes of being offline, privacy, and silence in the city brings about surprising results in Bruge’s Saint Trudo almshouses as part of this year’s triennial
John Powers: ‘Abstraction isn’t a technology or technique, it’s more an ethos (striving to be a virtue)’

Responding to the history of the city of Bruges, John Powers’ 15-metre-tall steel tower was constructed in situ for this year’s triennial and references long-neck swans and a medieval beheading
Katharina Sieverding: ‘I also make fake news’

Part of the collateral programme of this year’s Manifesta Biennial in Palermo is a career-spanning solo exhibition by the Czech-born, German artist. Here, Sieverding talks selfies, fascism and fake news
Samaneh Moafi of Forensic Architecture: ‘We are taking something that is already composed and pulling it apart, deconstructing it’

Forensic Architecture has never designed a building. Instead, it acts as an architectural detective agency to expose human rights abuses. Samaneh Moafi, one of its project leaders, talks about art prizes, the innovative potential of multidisciplinary collaboration and the role…
Alex Mirutziu: ‘I’m interested in error, misunderstanding, correction’

The Romanian artist talks about his latest exhibition, examining the life and work of Iris Murdoch, and discusses the biomechanics of writing, necrophilia and the novelist’s teddy bear
Baldwin and Guggisberg: ‘If you’re not in a white cube it forces you to take into consideration the reality that’s around you’

Having just installed 10, mostly blown-glass pieces around Canterbury Cathedral for their exhibition Under an Equal Sky, Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg talk about these new works and the resonance between their historic setting and their chosen issues of migration,…
Catherine Parsonage: ‘I wanted to break things apart, let everything be available to me’

The artist talks about how living in Rome has changed her work, why she is so interested in bodily fluids, and the role that alcohol and desire play in her painting
Eve Fowler: ‘Stein’s work really affected me’

The artist talks about her latest exhibition, What a slight, what a sound, what a universal shudder, at Dundee Arts Contemporary, and what has led her to engage so closely with Stein’s work
Manuel Mathieu: ‘Life experience sometimes forces you to see things that you wouldn’t otherwise have seen’

The Haitian artist talks about coming to terms with his country’s turbulent history and some personal challenges, and why he doesn’t take the business of making art lightly
Eleanor Pinfield: ‘London – and London Underground – deserves to have the best artists in the world’

Pinfield is Head of Art on the Underground, which has commissioned work by Cindy Sherman, David Shrigley and Assemble, among others. She talks about this year’s lineup of female artists and the desire to bring art to millions of travellers
David Cross: ‘Art is what fills the gap between how the world is and how I’d love it to be’

A reader at the University of the Arts London, Cross talks about his struggle to persuade the university to cut ties with fossil fuel investments and his continuing efforts to bridge the gap between commerce and environmental ethics
Phyllida Barlow: ‘It’s the first time I’ve experienced making something not within my control. Letting go of that was horrifying’

As her first permanent artwork, Quarry is unveiled at Jupiter Artland, outside Edinburgh, Barlow talks about its conception and creation, its location in the woods surrounding the house and gardens, and the ‘horrifying’ experience of ceding control to engineers and…
Celia Pym – interview: ‘I didn’t ever see the point of invisible mending’

Describing herself as ‘an artist who works in textiles’ Pym talks about her recent surgery for mending at the V&A, why she mends old clothes and artefacts, and why she feels it is so important to see the damage and…
Jane Irish: ‘There is a critical strain about the anti-war movement that I want to commemorate, so I really think of my work as history painting’

For the first time in its 200-year history, a mansion in Philadelphia is transformed into a major public art project by American artist Jane Irish. She talks about a career spent exploring anti-war activism
Harriet Middleton-Baker: ‘I enjoy the potential for opera to be seriously extreme’

The artist talks about unpicking the story of William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress and using her latest opera to explore architectural form, power distribution and the ambivalence of feminism in a corporate climate
Fergus McCaffrey Gallery opens in Japan

Since founding his New York gallery in 2006, Fergus McCaffrey has been instrumental in introducing postwar Japanese art to a western audience. He talks about his deep attachment to Japanese art and craft and his hopes for his new gallery…
Ettore Spalletti: ‘A yellow can lead me so far away into the light that I don’t even know whether I’m an abstract or figurative painter’

On the opening of his exhibition at the Galerie Marian Goodman, the Italian artist recounts his ritualistic process, the elusiveness of colour and why paintings should be like churches
Chila Kumari Burman: ‘I scribble and make a mess in my studio. My whole studio is one big drawing’

Burman talks about the inspirations for her intricate, multilayered works, including her latest commissions for the Science Museum and an exhibition honouring suffragettes – and why she bought a tuk-tuk
Paul Maheke: ‘Michael Jackson is the reason I dance. And Felix Gonzalez-Torres is the reason I still believe in the political potency of making art’

Through installation, sound, film and dance, Paul Maheke’s work explores gender and racial stereotypes, articulating the restrictions placed around black, male and queer identities. For his first major solo show, at the Chisenhale Gallery, he has stepped out of the…
Neil Gall: ‘As an artist, you are almost trying to find a new kind of beauty’

For his current show at the Henry Moore Institute, Gall has played around with old copies of The Studio magazine to make new cover versions. He talks about how he came across the old issues and what they mean to…